October 2014 Meeting &

Plant of the Month Competition

Speaker - Ewen Brown

October should have been John Ede on the last leg of his mini tour but unfortunately John had to call off due to ill health.

We were very fortunate to get Ewen Brown from Glasgow Branch to replace John at short notice. Ewen gave us a talk on Malaysia, the place of his birth and a part of the world which few of us have been to and not generally considered when discussing our type of plants. Ewen described a trip he took in 2005 starting from Kuala Lumpur in the south and travelling through the Cameron Mountains to the island of Penang in the north. The talk concentrated mainly on the country and architecture but just to keep the diehards happy we saw the botanic gardens in both Kuala Lumpur and Penang and also an area in the Cameron Mountains named Cactus Valley with six cactus nurseries in close proximity with lots of nice plants, especially large Echinocactus grusonii beautifully displayed.